Education RBC Bridges

NOW ACCEPTING APPLICATIONS FOR THE 2025 PROGRAM COHORT

RBC Bridges: Emerging Composers Program

Program Dates: February 21 – 28, 2025
Visiting Mentor: Tarik O’Regan
Resident Ensemble: Vancouver Chamber Choir
Program Includes: Free Tuition, Free Accommodation, and a $1000 CAD honorarium for program participants.
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Applications are now closed. Thank you to everyone who submitted.

Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges: Emerging Composers Program is an annual week-long tuition-free workshop that culminates in a public premiere performance. The week brings together celebrated mentors, a professional resident ensemble, and six emerging composers from around the world to each develop and premiere a new work, presented as part of Soundstreams’ main stage concert series in Toronto, ON.  

This year we are pleased to announce Tarik O’Regan as our visiting mentor and the Vancouver Chamber Choir as our resident ensemble. Previous RBC Bridges visiting mentor composers have included: R. Murray Schafer, Unsuk Chin, Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho, and Chris Paul Harman, Paul Grabowsky, and André Ristic.

Each participant will receive a $1,000 honorarium and free accommodation in Toronto for the duration of the workshop. Travel expenses to and from Toronto are the responsibility of the participants.  

The workshop week includes seminars, networking events, rehearsals, 1-1 mentorship sessions, and professional development activities that foster new connections, artistic development, and lifelong career building.  

The 2025 edition of Soundstreams’ RBC Bridges Program will feature British/American composer Tarik O’Regan as our composer/mentor-in-residence. Invited participants will write a short piece (5’ maximum) for our resident ensemble, which this year we’re thrilled to announce will be the Vancouver Chamber Choir. The Vancouver Chamber choir is a 16-voice SATB choir. Composers must write for the full voicing of the choir, either SATB or SSAATTBB and may include possible solo voices from within the choir. Works can be written either as a cappella (non-accompanied, voices only) or as accompanied works with piano. 

The Bridges Composers works will be premiered at Soundstream’s mainstage concert featuring the Vancouver Chamber Choir on February 27th, 2025, at Christ Church Deer Park, Toronto ON. 

Participants will receive an honorarium of $1,000 and free accommodation in Toronto for the duration of the workshop week. Successful applicants will be expected to submit a completed 5-minute work by January 2, 2025.

ABOUT THE MENTOR:

Tarik Hamilton O’Regan is a London-born composer based in San Francisco. In recent years much of his work has investigated and been influenced by his dual Arab and Irish heritages. 

24/25 sees performances in many parts of the world, including at Deutsche Opera Berlin, the Wigmore Hall in London, Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, Soundstreams in Toronto, and by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Scottish Chamber Orchestra, and Vancouver Chamber Choir among others. Also, this season, his writing is featured on the longstanding BBC Radio series, The Essay, and he will be awarded the prestigious Yaddo Artist Medal at a ceremony in New York City. 

Tarik’s output, recognized with two GRAMMY® nominations and two Ivors®, has been recorded on over 47 albums, and is published exclusively by Novello. He maintains a longstanding commitment to education and service to the arts in general. This has been acknowledged by his election to an Honorary Fellowship of Pembroke College, Oxford, and his inclusion in the Washington Post’s 2022 list of creative artists who are “changing the classical landscape.” 

In 2023 he was awarded the Coronation Medal by His Majesty King Charles III for his Agnus Dei, commissioned for the Coronation Service at Westminster Abbey. Most recently Oratorio of Hope, a project which O’Regan helped devise, was nominated for a 2024 Royal Philharmonic Society Award, and the commissioning of his Requiem for the Estranged received a major grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) ahead of its premiere in 2025. 

ABOUT THE RESIDENT ENSEMBLE:

Artistic Director Kari Turunen began leading the Vancouver Chamber Choir — one of Canada’s premier professional choral ensembles — in September 2019, its 49th concert season. 

Jon Washburn founded the choir in 1971 and it has become an amazing success story, ranking with the handful of North America’s best professional choruses and noted for its diverse repertoire and performing excellence. The choir has presented concerts to audiences at home in Vancouver and on tour across Canada. International excursions have taken them to the USA, Mexico, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Finland, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Ukraine. 

Honoured with the Margaret Hillis Award for Choral Excellence by Chorus America, the choir has performed countless concerts and broadcasts, released 36 recordings and received numerous awards. Foremost supporters of Canadian music, they are responsible for commissions and premieres of 334 choral works by 145 composers and arrangers, most of whom are Canadian. Over the years the choir has sung over 4,000 performances of works by Canadian composers, in addition to their extensive international repertoire. 

The choir’s award-winning educational programs include the Conductors’ Symposium for advanced choral conductors, Interplay interactive workshops for choral composers, Focus professional development program for student singers, OnSite visitations for school choirs, the biennial Young Composers’ Competition, and many on-tour workshops and residencies. 

ABOUT RBC BRIDGES:

RBC Bridges is an annual week-long tuition-free program that brings together celebrated composer-mentors, a professional resident ensemble, and six emerging composers chosen through a competition. Composers selected to participate are given the opportunity to develop and premiere a short new work for a professional resident ensemble with mentorship from a distinguished visiting composer.

The program also includes professional development workshops on subjects including publishing, commissioning, approaching artistic directors/producers with your music, and making a living as a composer. Initiated in 2013, RBC Bridges visiting mentor composers have included: R. Murray Schafer, Unsuk Chin, Steve Reich, Kaija Saariaho, and Chris Paul Harman, Paul Grabowsky, and André Ristic. Resident ensembles have included the Gryphon Trio, the Ralston String Quartet and TORQ.

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ELIGIBILITY REQUIREMENTS

Eligible applicants must self-identify as “emerging.” To help determine if you fit into this category, consider whether one or more of the following statements apply to you:

• You are currently studying, or recently graduated from, a related post-graduate degree/program or other formal training.
• You devote 24 hours a week or more to the pursuit of your art.
• You are not yet recognized as “established” by your peers.
• You have not yet had a major commission or presentation opportunity (or very few).

Selected participants must be available to attend all workshop dates in Toronto, Canada from February 21 – 28, 2025. 

 The program is open to applicants from Canada and internationally. International participants are responsible for obtaining the required visa to travel to Canada. All travel expenses are the responsibility of the participant. Accommodation is provided free of charge to participants.   

We welcome applications from composers of all backgrounds and musical traditions. Please note that the Workshop depends on participants’ ability to use musical notation; however, if musical notation is not part of your practice, we may be able to consider ways to accommodate your needs if this has been identified at the time of application.  

Please note that the Workshop is delivered in English. 

ANTI-RACISM, ACCESS AND EQUITY AT SOUNDSTREAMS

At Soundstreams we recognize that barriers to services exist for members of diverse communities, particularly for equity seeking groups, and we are committed to acting as a positive force in eliminating these barriers.

To achieve this, Soundstreams will:

• ensure that diverse communities have equitable access to its services, resources and decision making.
• be non-discriminatory and promote the goals of antiracism, access, and equity; and
• take reasonable steps to ensure its services, programs and decision making reflect the community it serves

Soundstreams is committed to maintaining an environment where all individuals are treated with dignity and respect and are free from all forms of discriminatory treatment, behaviour or practice.

Applicants may choose to disclose any accessibility needs or concerns related to applying and/or attending the Workshop. Soundstreams will endeavour to support accessibility needs wherever possible.

QUESTIONS?

If you have inquiries about the application process, contact Amy Wilford at amyw [at] soundstreams.ca